The Randstad, a polycentric metropolis, by Vincent Nadin & Will Zonneveld. (Introduction Chapter)

1 Introducing the Randstad 

A polycentric metropolis 

Vincent Nadin and Wil Zonneveld 

Introduction 

The Randstad is a cluster of relatively medium-sized and small cities in the 

western Netherlands that encircles an expanse of largely open land. It is undoubtedly 

an important urban region, hosting in an area of about 7,000 km 2 , 

Europe’s largest seaport, third busiest airport, second largest Internet Exchange, 

and about 7 million people. But the Randstad is much more than 

this. Since the 1960s, it has acquired distinction as the archetypal polycentric 

metropolis, an integrated urban ring around a Green Heart, with the status of 

a world-class metropolitan region. There is a presumption too, that government 

has played an influential role in strengthening the polycentricity of the 

region, especially through its renowned capability in spatial planning. 

But the reality of the polycentric Randstad as opposed to the idea is controversial, 

as is the role of spatial planning. Do the interconnections between the 

four main cities – Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, and Utrecht – and 

the many smaller settlements in-between function as an integrated polycentric 

region? Does the economic and social performance of the combined 

whole of the Randstad add up to more than the sum of its parts? Advocates 

point to the apparent complementarity of the main cities with a tendency for 

business and financial functions to be centred in Amsterdam, port and logistics 

in Rotterdam, governance and international justice in The Hague, and 

research and development in Utrecht. Critics draw attention to the relatively 

limited flows of commuters between the cities, and the concentration of the 

daily urban flows within the individual city-regions, which they argue operate 

independently. 

Naturally, the truth lies somewhere between these opposing views. This 

book reviews the evidence on both the idea and the reality of the Randstad 

polycentric metropolis. In this introduction we explain the reasons for producing 

the book and our questions; elaborate our understanding of the notion 

of a polycentric metropolis; sketch the key characteristics of the Randstad; 

and preview its history of spatial development and planning as an orientation 

for the chapters that follow. But much has been said about the Randstad in 

the past so why should we take up this task again now? 

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4 Vincent Nadin and Wil Zonneveld 

We know from our work at Delft University of Technology with its highly 

international community of staff and students that there is a wide and growing 

interest in the experience of the Netherlands in managing spatial development 

to resolve competing land use demands in congested and vulnerable 

environments. Metropolitan planning authorities across the world are exploring 

the potential of polycentricity to assist in creating more prosperous, 

environmentally sustainable, and socially just regions. They see the Netherlands, 

and specifically the Randstad, as a source of inspiration. The Randstad 

is recognised as an exemplary case – true or not – of effective territorial 

governance in a polycentric region. 

In Europe, the idea of polycentric functional regions is well established at 

city, region and transnational scales, having first been promoted as a policy 

option in the late 1990s (CSD, 1999). The aim then was primarily to spatially 

‘balance’ urban development and economic opportunity and to foster better 

relations between urban and rural areas. About the same time, it became clear 

that large metropolitan city-regions are the focal point in global international 

economic competition, and that they tend to be more successful where they 

have a strong concentration and diversity of skills and services. This condition 

is delivered by large monocentric cities and their hinterlands, but it 

might also be delivered by a cluster of cities acting in concert. Thus, regional 

and local governments took up the polycentricity concept with the primary 

aim to create an integrated urban cluster with combined weight that would 

have competitive advantage in international competition, combined with the 

advantage of accessible metropolitan landscapes due to its spatial structure. 

Since the 1990s the importance of polycentricity as a mechanism for creating 

critical economic and social mass in urban and regional development in 

European regions has not diminished. Further encouragement and measures 

to capitalise on the huge potential for strengthening the competitiveness of 

urban regions through policies for polycentricity will feature in the forthcoming 

EU Territorial Reference Framework (ESPON, 2020) as well as in the 

draft European Territorial Agenda 2030 (TA 2030, 2019). Elsewhere in the 

world, especially in south-east Asia and Latin America, policies for polycentricity 

have been taken up vigorously, in part where there are clusters of 

cities, but also as a way forward for huge monocentric agglomerations. In 

China, strengthening polycentricity within and between cities is a national 

policy, and an explicit objective of the strategic spatial plans of most cities, including 

Beijing (Liu and Wang, 2016). It is not surprising therefore that policy 

makers should continue to look to the Randstad for evidence of the value 

of polycentricity where it has been promoted in various ways since the 1950s. 

However, anecdotally, we find that there is often a misunderstanding 

about the performance of the polycentric metropolis of the Randstad and the 

role of spatial planning in creating it. The apparent uniformly good quality 

of urban development, infrastructure, natural environment and public 

realm, together with the relatively high level of stability in the governance 

and economy of the Netherlands, may give a false impression. There is a 

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Introducing the Randstad 5 

view in the Netherlands that foreigners see the Randstad through rose-tinted 

glasses. The views from within the country on the reality and value of a 

polycentric Randstad tend to be more sceptical. This is not to undermine the 

achievements over 70 years, but to say that a critical but constructive assessment 

would be helpful, the ingredients of which this book seeks to provide. 

The Randstad and polycentric regions generally are not only vehicles to 

create critical economic mass. Cooperation among otherwise discrete cities 

also provides the platform necessary to deal with other pressing challenges. 

The economic performance criterion is today joined by other goals and priorities 

on which sustained prosperity depends. This change may be particularly 

evident in the Netherlands, where the concentration of people, economic 

output, and social infrastructure lies on land mostly below sea level. Metropolitan 

regions are in a crucial position to address many other concerns: 

protecting critical natural capital, strengthening resilience to risks including 

flooding, mitigating climate change, providing good quality shelter for all, 

designing environments that are sensitive to the needs of an ageing population, 

integrating migrants into society, managing urban-rural relations, 

shaping settlement patterns to avoid unnecessary conversion of open land, 

and more. And in 2020, the COVID-19 crisis gave to the world a very sharp 

reminder of the significance of the living environment in cities and regions 

for the maintenance of the health of their people, and of the importance of 

building resilient communities, cities and regions that can quickly respond to 

crises. There is no doubt that the aftermath of COVID-19 will present great 

tests for territorial governance as city and regional actors reform their objectives 

and policies in light of changing global and local conditions. 

The contributions here provide a platform of understanding that can be 

employed in weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the spatial form 

and governance of the Randstad polycentric metropolis for these urgent 

questions. How government and key players take up these challenges in the 

future urban development of the Randstad and other metropolitan regions 

will have critical consequences for their citizens. They should be informed 

by a review of the origins, performance and likely future of this polycentric 

metropolis. The chapters in this book update evidence across a number of 

themes and disciplines to explain the historical conditions giving rise to the 

Randstad and its later evolution; they review the chequered history of the 

governance of the Randstad polycentric metropolis as it is has come and gone 

in national policy; they present competing views of the value of the Randstad 

as a regional planning concept in the past and for the future; and they review 

its practical impact on the performance of the region and the Netherlands 

as a whole while offering a balanced view on the effectiveness of planning. 

Decision makers around the world will continue to look to the Netherlands 

for creative examples of regional spatial development and governance, and we 

hope will benefit from this critical review of the evidence. 

In sum, we present this book to provide sources of evidence, but also critical 

analysis and understanding of a complex global metropolitan region, and 

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through this, possible lessons for strategic planning in other metropolitan 

regions. We have four main questions that are addressed to varying degrees 

by the following chapters and to which we return in the conclusion. 

• How has the spatial configuration of the Randstad evolved, and what 

has been the contribution of deliberate societal intervention versus the 

natural conditions of the delta? 

• Does the polycentric Randstad metropolis have real substance in reality 

in terms of the whole being more than a collection of parts, or is it no 

more than an idea promoted for professional and political reasons? 

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Randstad’s spatial configuration 

for meeting economic, environmental and social challenges, 

for the needs of business, and for the lives of its citizens? 

• What is the outlook for the Randstad as a policy concept in the context 

of the government’s competing needs to improve resilience in the vulnerable 

delta setting, and to meet demands for further urban development 

and transformation? 

Polycentricity and the metropolitan region 

What is polycentricity and how would we know if a region is polycentric and 

if it has delivered the intended benefits? The central notion is that proximate 

cities share functions, services and labour between them, and combine their 

complementary strengths in a collaborative way. The cities accrue benefits in 

terms of their economic standing and opportunities for citizens because they 

‘borrow size’ from the others (Burger et al., 2015; Meijers and Burger, 2017) 

and that integration between cities in a cohesive urban system improves economic 

performance of the whole (Meijers et al., 2017). Polycentricity has been 

a significant concept in European spatial planning since the 1990s, indeed it 

has been argued that it is central to a ‘new European vocabulary’ of spatial 

planning, being ‘sufficiently vague to serve as receptacles for the wide range 

of perspectives’ (Gløersen et al., 2007: 418). It may be vague, but the primary 

purpose has always been clear, to enable regions of dispersed urban centres 

to compete more effectively in the global economy. Some ‘perspectives’ may 

give priority to other objectives too, for example, increased polycentricity 

may reduce unnecessary duplication of services and inefficient use of land 

and create more opportunities for citizens in terms of employment, services 

(including metropolitan landscapes) and social life. 

Achieving polycentricity requires capacity in sub-national government to 

share and enable flows, which, in turn, needs hard and soft infrastructure 

interventions and shared governance of some functions in the region. Government 

administrations rarely operate at a scale that enables them to provide 

the necessary cooperation. Establishing statutory institutions that combine 

city governments is difficult, and in most cases probably unnecessary, but 

some platform or platforms for sharing and integrating policy and investment 

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are a prerequisite for pursuing polycentricity. In Europe, since the 1990s 

there has been a proliferation of special planning areas for functional planning 

regions, or soft spaces, that cut across formal administrative jurisdictions 

(Allmendinger et al., 2015a,b). They operate at different scales for many purposes, 

but include many planning initiatives to strengthen the polycentric 

attributes of regions. To some extent they provide a ‘metagovernance’ for the 

region that overcomes the limitations of fixed territoriality and creates conditions 

for combining different forms and scales of governance arrangements 

in smaller units, including their spatial strategy making (Allmendinger and 

Haughton, 2009). 

Spaans and Zonneveld (2015) describe the Randstad and the Green Heart 

as archetypal ‘soft spaces’ (although from the mid-1990s the boundaries of the 

Green Heart were ‘hardened’ through precise mapping in regulation plans). 

However, as we explain below, the creation of a governance platform at the 

Randstad level has eluded its advocates. Nonetheless, there are many other 

overlapping and intersecting soft spaces within the western Netherlands, 

where governance platforms have been established and are active, including 

for the south and north ‘wings’ of the Randstad (the regions surrounding 

Amsterdam and Rotterdam-The Hague), inter-municipal cooperation areas, 

and other ad hoc cooperation arrangements. At the Randstad level, it has 

not been possible to reach political agreement about the validity of the space 

and the concept because of the very large number of varied interests and 

the attitudes of particularly powerful ones. Bounded spaces for government 

are deeply rooted, not least in the Netherlands where the municipalities are 

relatively powerful. Local governments can claim legitimacy as the accountable 

policy maker when it suits them. But even if there is no platform at the 

Randstad level, the existence and endorsement of the Randstad concept may 

still play a role in reminding the actors that they are playing on a wider stage 

than their immediate surroundings. 

At the wing level and other sub-spaces within the Randstad, cooperation 

has proved more workable though still difficult, and a layering of nested planning 

spaces has emerged with a mix of formal and informal institutions formulating 

shared policy through varying processes and levels of competence. 

At this level, cooperation tends to be associated with plainly strong functional 

relationships with obvious flows of commuters and tangible and intangible 

goods and services crossing between the constituent jurisdictions. However, 

the many cooperation arrangements across the Randstad tend to be in the 

form of networks, with government in control often aligned with business 

and its agenda over a specified territory, rather than the more fluid bottom-up 

actor networks that have been advocated (Jauhiainen and Moilanen, 2011). 

The lack of deeper cooperation arrangements at the Randstad scale reflects 

much uncertainty about whether it actually constitutes a functional 

region, and if the pursuit of polycentricity would bring the benefits claimed. 

The chapters that follow address these issues thoroughly. Here, we should 

emphasise that there is very diverse mix of attitudes to the Randstad. There 

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are many advocates. A number of the chapters in this volume refer to the 

inclusion of the Randstad in Hall’s 1966 seminal work, World Cities. Hall elevated 

the Randstad to one of the ‘great urban regions of the world’ alongside 

London, Tokyo, New York and others, making up a global network of ‘urban 

concentrations of business, specialised expertise, knowledge and finance’ 

(Pain, 2017: 1). This high ranking in the world urban hierarchy certainly 

would not be achieved by any one of the main cities alone, indeed, only Amsterdam 

among the cities of the Randstad figures among the 55 ‘alpha cities’ 

of the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network. 1 

Since then, the Randstad has been celebrated in many publications (especially 

in other countries). Along with Hamburg, the Randstad is been picked 

out in a study of soft planning spaces in north-west Europe as a prominent 

example of a successful initiative that has overcome problems of territorial 

administrative boundaries ‘to accept and include on a pragmatic basis the 

heterogeneity of actors and consciously avoiding a formal geography and instead 

promoting flexible or blurred boundaries’ (Othengrafen et al., 2015: 

227). This perspective is justified only in relation to the cooperation in the 

sub-spaces of the Randstad. But in practice, too, the Randstad is presented 

as a model for other regions. In the United Kingdom, the One Powerhouse 

Consortium (2019: 2) has invoked the example of the Randstad as one of a 

few global regions that ‘have used spatial planning to focus political will, 

economic activity and social reform to great effect’. 

Those who are not enthusiastic (especially in the Netherlands) fall into two 

camps. There are those that doubt the Randstad’s polycentric character but 

want government to act more forcefully to deliver it, and there are those that 

refer to the Randstad as a myth, rejecting both its existence or benefits that 

might accrue from becoming more polycentric. The most notable exponent 

in the first group is Niek de Boer, former professor at Delft University of 

Technology from 1969 to 1989, whose 1996 book (in translation) ‘The Randstad 

Does not Exist: the Failure to Pursue a Metropolitan Policy’, argued that 

the government had not addressed but should act at the ‘metropolitan scale’. 

In a similar way, an OECD Territorial Review of the Randstad in 2007 

concluded that functional relations in the Randstad operated mostly at the 

scale of the city-region, but it also strongly advocated national government to 

intervene to strengthen the functional coherence of the Randstad as a whole 

to reap benefits from potential agglomeration effects. 

A figurehead for the second group is Zef Hemel, a former board member of 

the Urban Planning Department of Amsterdam who believes the Randstad 

to be an ‘expensive fairy tale’, and that it ‘bears a striking resemblance to the 

“Emperor’s Clothes”’(2017). Sceptics such as Hemel tend to agree about the 

importance of networks of cities but argue that such functional connections 

go well beyond the four core cities of the Randstad within and beyond the 

Netherlands. 

How does these alternative views stand up to the evidence? There is support 

both for and against, and many commentators end up sitting on the 

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fence. Meijers et al. in Chapter 6 and Ritsema van Eck and Van der Wouden 

in Chapter 7 summarise the different ways that functional relations have been 

measured. They give a balanced view, explaining that findings on functional 

coherence depend very much on the indicators used. Whilst the treatment of 

the Randstad in national policy has been inconsistent, they are in no doubt 

that spatial planning has made a difference in the Randstad. Meijers et al. 

add that the normative pursuit of polycentricity in the Netherlands has been 

determined largely by political ideology, rather than the facts, and has been 

diminished in the face of populism and neoliberalism. 

By way of a preview of the dynamics of the Randstad that follows in Part 

III, the numerous studies of functional relations in the Randstad tend to 

concentrate on the analysis of commuting flows, but there is also attention 

to information flows between businesses, residential and business migration, 

labour market effects, leisure trips, and other measures. The findings are that 

the bulk of daily urban flows is concentrated in the city regions, but trips by 

professional and business occupation groups are important at the Randstad 

scale. Some cities are more connected than others and this is strongest within 

the north and south wings. Ritsema van Eck and Van der Wouden report 

in Chapter 7 that flows did not change between the 1990s and early 2000s, 

but there has been some growth at the Randstad scale of people flows, especially 

occupations requiring higher level education. Whilst much smaller in 

absolute terms, these movements may reflect more accurately the metropolitan 

functions of a global business services that Hall and others refer to. De 

Hoog explains in Chapter 10 that metropolitan functions are not dependent on 

the daily urban system. Another aspect of this is the increasingly significant 

role of Amsterdam as a node in the city network, attracting more distant 

commuting. This relates to its business service function and may also be an 

indication of the housing shortage and affordability problem highlighted by 

Elsinga et al. in Chapter 9. 

On the benefits of polycentricity, an assessment of the Randstad’s performance 

in the early 1990s strongly supports Hall’s 1960s assessment by 

concluding that the collective strengths of the cities together with the sea 

and air gateways ‘propel the Randstad to the top of the European urban 

hierarchy, making it a world city of the highest level… [but that] In terms 

of the various advanced producer services and international management activities, 

the Randstad achieves only a middle-level ranking’ (Shachar, 1994: 

398). This would support stronger intervention by government on aspects of 

polycentricity. Since then, the balance of importance of trade and other flows 

between cities in or beyond their immediate region has changed markedly. 

Wall (2009) argues that cities of the Randstad now depend more on other 

international cities than their local neighbours, making the idea of local functional 

relations and regional polycentricity less, rather than more important. 

Policy on the Randstad will surely need to keep abreast of these dynamics. 

The global COVID-19 crisis of 2020 heralds another far-reaching and more 

swift reform of international business and cultural relations. The performance 

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measure for a polycentric Randstad is perhaps not international economic 

performance per se, but rather its resilience in recovering from such shocks. 

Profile of the Randstad 

The term Randstad was coined in 1938 by Albert Plesman, a pioneer in aviation 

and founder of the Dutch airline KLM. He used the term Randstad to 

express what he saw from his aircraft, a ‘rim city’ or ‘edge city’. The rim is 

formed by the four main cities as shown in Figure 1.1. (The full story of the 

genesis of ‘Randstad’ is given in Chapter 6.) This morphological character 

of the Randstad will quickly become recognisable to the newcomer. First 

impressions of the territory of the Randstad are usually that it is flat; that it 

is clearly urban but interspersed with large stretches of open and intensively 

used agricultural land; that it is orderly arranged with a clear demarcation 

of built and unbuilt environment; that if travelling by road or rail it is congested, 

but if travelling by bike that it is enlightened and open; that citizens 

are well housed in attractive neighbourhoods; that the historic environment 

appears to be cared for and well managed; that the urban realm offers a high 

quality and safe walking environment; and that the people are prosperous and 

welcoming, if at times a little blunt. 

The geography of the Randstad is unmistakably deltaic, with expanses 

of flat open land crisscrossed by watercourses and historic windmills that 

remain from a former network of more than 10,000. It is a polder landscape 

where over eight centuries past generations have reclaimed land from marshes 

and the sea for agriculture and urban development. The result is a completely 

artificial landscape of straight lines and intensive agriculture. Water is inescapable, 

and in the cities too, where canals and dikes form the essential 

and historic foundations on which the cities were designed and built. The 

landscape is immediately recognisable as Dutch with its regular, rational, and 

orderly aesthetic quality. But beneath the surface appearance, urbanisation 

and intensive agriculture and recreation put huge pressure on the environment. 

A 2019 EU review (CEC, 2019) noted that progress was being made in 

improving water and air quality and habitat and biodiversity degradation, but 

concluded that there is much more to be done if the Netherlands is to meet 

its national and international commitments. 

Estimates of size and significance of the Randstad vary because there is no 

formal administrative border, no government tier, and therefore no official 

statistics, as explained below. Reference is often made to figures for the four 

constituent provinces in which the Randstad sits or their main cities: Flevoland 

(Almere), North Holland (Amsterdam), Utrecht (province and city) 

and South Holland (Rotterdam and The Hague). This is a reasonable approximation 

for many purposes although it does add a large part of mainly 

agricultural lands in North Holland and Flevoland which are not part of the 

metropolitan region. But the boundaries of the Randstad are elastic, expanding 

and contracting depending on the topic and interests pursued. Generally, 

the geographical meaning of the Randstad has expanded over the decades, 

notably to take in Almere in Flevoland which was built on land reclaimed 

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Figure 1.1 The Randstad including its wider setting. 

Source: Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and NWB, edited by Marnix Breedijk, PBL Netherlands 

Environmental Assessment Agency.


from the sea from 1974 and formed part of the Amsterdam city-region from 

the late 1980s. At periods in the history of the Randstad, there has also been 

an interest in urban corridors that extend beyond the core cities to the east 

(Germany) in particular, but they are excluded from the discussion here. 

To put the Randstad in context, Table 1.1 gives a number of measures for 

the Randstad in comparison to three ‘monocentric world cities’. Bearing in 

mind the difficulties of international comparison because of varying definitions 

and administrative structures, the area of the larger Randstad (four 

provinces) is similar to that of the metropolitan region of Guangzhou, but 

much larger than Greater London. The four cities of the Randstad and numerous 

small towns around them have a combined population of about 7 

million whilst the four provinces in which the Randstad is based have a joint 

population of over 8 million, 47% of the total population of the Netherlands. 

The dependency rate, the proportion of working age population compared to 

the young and elderly, was around the average for Europe at about 70%, but 

will be an increasing challenge for government. 

As might be expected, the Randstad has a lower population density than the 

monocentric metropolitan regions. The table gives two estimates for population 

density, one based on the provinces and the larger figure based only on the 

constituent city-regions. However, the Netherlands has the highest population 

density and the highest rate of urbanisation in Europe at 500 persons/km 2 

Table 1.1 Comparison of key figures for Randstad and other world cities 

Area, km 2 

Population, 

million a 

Pop 

density, 

pers/km 2 

GDP Sustainable 

2019 cities index 

billion $ c ranking d 

Greater 1,572 11.6 5,729 851 1 3.9 

London 

Guangzhou 7,434 13.3 1,789 382 74 3.5 

Los Angeles 4,496 13.2 2,935 1,170 45 3.7 

Randstad b 8,287/7,000 8.15/7.1 983/1,014 420 12 3.0 


Air traffic 

capacity 

million seats e 

Source: Authors. 

a Sources: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019; Los Angeles- 

Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Metro Area: US Census Bureau 2019 estimate. 

b Randstad: As there is no administrative area for the Randstad, the figures given refer first to 

the four provinces (Regio Randstad, 2017), and second to our own estimate of the area of the 

Randstad 7,000 km 2 (the ‘extensive Randstad’, including Purmerend in the north, Almere 

and Amersfoort in the east and Dordrecht in the south). The smaller population figure refers 

to the four city regions. 

c Sources: OECD Stat. Available at: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode= 

CITIES#, except for Guangzhou: estimated by Asia Times at: https://asiatimes.com/. Randstad 

figure is sum of the four main cities. 

d Source: Arcadis, 2018. 

e OAG seat capacity statistics February 2020. Available at: https://www.oag.com/. Later 

in 2020, capacity was reduced by as much as 95% because of the COVID-19 restrictions on 

travel.


and 92%, respectively (excluding very small countries) 2 , growing from 52% 

in 1950 (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018). These relatively 

high figures are more pronounced for the Randstad, which has a population 

density of about 1,000 persons/km 2 , although the urban profile is ‘low 

rise’. The population is spread evenly across the region, with only 2.5 million 

in the four main cities. And it is diverse. In the Netherlands, as a whole for 

2019, 27% of the population had a ‘migration background’, that is, a parent 

born in another country. 3 The population is also remarkably well-housed 

in comparison to most other metropolitan regions. Elsinga et al. explain in 

Chapter 9 how post-war governments have intervened strongly to initially 

solve a housing shortage, and later to improve the conditions of the housing 

and its urban surroundings. Government-led and subsidised housing has been 

instrumental in the spatial development of the Randstad, contributing to 

the conversion of the region from a cluster of self-contained cities to a dense 

network of urban settlements. 

Almost complete urbanisation of the Randstad is reflected in the density 

of infrastructure. The Netherlands is second only to Belgium among 

European countries for road density. It has the fifth highest road density in 

the world, including a very high provision of motorways, some 127 km for 

each 1,000 km 2 land area, with much of it concentrated in the Randstad 

and especially around the port of Rotterdam. 4 However, the road network 

is outshone by the water infrastructure, even though much of that which 

is keeping the feet of the Dutch dry is invisible. It includes thousands of 

pumping stations, 22,000 km of dikes and 70,000 km of watercourses. The 

Randstad has a disproportionate share given that a majority of its surface area 

is below sea level. Water transport on the other hand is plainly visible. The 

Randstad has by far the highest density of water transport in Europe save for 

one region, also in the Netherlands – Zeeland. Railways too are well catered 

for with South Holland having the seventh most dense network in Europe 

(133 km/1,000 km 2 ), behind German and Czech regions. Travellers from 

most other countries are impressed with the rail service which is a true network 

with fine stations (part of a national programme of planning projects), 

and many precise interconnections between lines, and between rail, other 

public transport, and cycling. Despite its strengths, the public transport network 

is somewhat weak at the scale of the Randstad. Only the main stations 

are connected across the Randstad between Rotterdam and Amsterdam, 

since 2009 with the option of the Netherlands, only high-speed line. This 

dense infrastructure network also services the ports: Rotterdam Port, the 

largest port in Europe handling the equivalent of 37,000 ‘20-foot containers’ 

each day; and Schiphol Amsterdam Airport, the fourth busiest airport in the 

world for international traffic which provides in the peak period more than 

200,000 passenger seats per day. 5 

The development of extensive physical and soft infrastructure has since 

the seventeenth century gone hand in hand with the growth of the economy 

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and international trade. In 2017 the Randstad (four provinces) was the fourth 

largest metropolitan economy in Europe, after London, Paris, and the Rhine- 

Ruhr (also polycentric), and before the COVID-19 crisis was experiencing 

reasonably good growth throughout the later 2010s of about 2.5% per year. 

Whilst the Netherlands is probably most well-known for its export of agricultural 

products, the most important trade for the Randstad is in machinery 

and transport equipment, manufactured goods and chemical products 

(Statistics Netherlands, 2019). Petroleum, the import of crude and export of 

refined and related products, is also important. As Hein explains in Chapter 3, 

the Randstad, and particularly Rotterdam, forms the hub of the significant 

‘petroleum landscape’ of the Netherlands, though it is not so visible to those 

not directly involved. In contrast, agriculture is on display in the Randstad, 

notably the complex of greenhouses in the West- and Eastland between Rotterdam 

and The Hague which is a major hub of the Dutch intensive, hightech 

horticulture industry that has made the Netherlands the second largest 

exporter of food products in the world after the United States. 

Perhaps surprisingly, investment in research and development in the Dutch 

economy is low at around 2% compared to other European metropolitan 

areas (only half the rate of Copenhagen for example). The proportion of the 

labour force with a higher education is also low at 39% compared to London 

with 49%. In 2007, the OECD warned of a ‘brain drain’ in the Randstad and 

the need to do more to attract and retain a highly qualified workforce making 

effective use of its higher education infrastructure. On the other hand, 

the Randstad is home to five of the top 75 universities in the world, while 

Germany has ‘only’ four. 6 

A dimension of the Randstad that is invisible to the visitor is its (territorial) 

governance, although aspects can be inferred from the general conditions on 

view. In Chapters 3 and 4 Meyer and Hooimeijer explain how the challenging 

water environment gave rise to strong governance and a collaborative culture 

in the Netherlands from the 1200s that are still prevalent today. Spaans et al. 

bring that up to the present day, presenting the many abandoned attempts to 

provide for a ‘fourth layer’ of government for the metropolitan regions and 

resulting in a convoluted map of contemporary governance arrangements. In 

sum, there has been little success in providing collaborative governance for 

the Randstad as a whole, despite calls for administrative reform, for example, 

in the early 1990s. Dieleman and Musterd (1992) believed that it was time for 

a metropolitan government with sweeping competences in spatial planning, 

housing, transport, and more. Such reform is unthinkable now, but there is a 

serious widening gap in the governance of the metropolitan region beyond 

the wings as central government retreats from national spatial planning. Collaboration 

platforms around the two centres of gravity north and south have 

been more successful. For Schrijnen (Chapter 15) it is a matter of regret that 

although the Randstad operates and is recognised as metropolis in so many 

ways, there has been little coordinated policy across the whole metropolis, 

especially in creating a truly metropolitan transport system. 

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Episodes in the modern development of the Randstad 

The idea of the Randstad as a polycentric metropolis is a consistent feature 

in the modern history of Dutch spatial development and planning, but there 

have been many twists and turns. Most of the papers that follow in this volume 

refer to key stages in this history and explain in more detail the key 

events and their relevance for the Randstad today. Here, we provide a sketch 

of the main episodes in the evolution of the Randstad as a general orientation 

for readers. An elaborate timeline is provided by the Spatial Planning Calendar: 

75 Years of National Spatial Planning in the Netherlands (Ministry of Infrastructure 

and Environment, 2013). Also, various chapters in this volume set out 

a chronology relevant to the topic in question, with varying phases, see in 

particular, Chapter 11 by Zonneveld and Chapter 13 by Van der Wouden. 

We distinguish five key episodes in thinking and practice about the Randstad 

in Dutch spatial policy from the 1950s to the 2020s. The episodes are, 

in turn, related to waves of urban growth, wider economic and demographic 

change, and political priorities. Needless to say, this simple organisation of 

a 60-year history is in reality not so neat. Layers of detail and the interconnections 

among these periods are revealed in the following chapters. Over 

those 60 years the challenge of effectively managing physical urban growth 

has become more intense as the population of the Netherlands has grown by 

70% and GDP per capita has increased six-fold. In meeting that challenge, 

the controversial notion of the Randstad has usually been present, though 

in varying form and significance. And it has endured even when eschewed 

by formal policy. Whilst policies may change abruptly, practices and ways of 

thinking will change more slowly. The point has been made many times that 

Dutch planning revolves around a deeply rooted and persistent culture, the 

doctrine of rule and order. The notions of the Randstad and the Green Heart 

are so fundamental to this doctrine that ‘rescinding these ideas would mean 

the demise of the doctrine and the institutional arrangements surrounding it’ 

(Faludi and Van der Valk, 1994: 253). 

The clustered pattern of cities in what was to become the western Netherlands 

was fixed from the Middle Ages. In Chapter 2, Brand explains that 

by 1560 the main cities were pursuing complementary functions and that 

by 1850 a strengthening national government was beginning to control the 

expansion of cities and lay the foundations of the polycentric spatial configuration, 

ensuring that one city, Amsterdam, was not able to dominate. By the 

beginning of the twentieth century, there was clear recognition in society of 

an interconnected urban region beyond the individual cities. 


1950s and 1960s: containment and the metropolitan network 

The priorities in the immediate post-war period were reconstruction and 

restoring industrial production. Redevelopment in conjunction with ruralurban 

migration and natural growth meant that the Randstad cities grew


quickly. Projections in 1960 forecast that population would almost double 

by 2000, from 11 to 20 million, though the outcome has been 17.4 million 

by 2020. The government’s willingness and capacity to plan and regulate 

physical development had also been growing from the 1940s. Stimulated 

by a new planning agency created in wartime and a 1958 policy advice of a 

high-level advisory committee, national government created the necessary 

political, administrative, and research organisations needed to intervene, 

and so it did. 

Experience of the war and occupation reinforced the pre-war view that 

decentralisation of industrial activity and the containment of a cluster of independent 

cities were conducive to a more secure, prosperous, and fair society. 

Later in the 1960s, this was to become the now infamous concept of 

gebundelde deconcentratie or ‘concentrated deconcentration’. It was a physical 

morphological policy but reflecting the strong Christian Democratic culture 

of the country with its emphasis on small towns and villages, underpinned 

also by concerns about social and spatial justice, the latter idea known today 

in Europe as territorial cohesion (Faludi, 2007). 

The tools used to promote and implement these ideas began with a 1958 

advisory report, De Ontwikkeling van het Westen des Lands, the Development 

of the West of the Country, which called for the continued separation of a 

ring of distinctive cities around an agricultural heartland, with the anticipated 

strong urban growth directed to areas beyond the Randstad avoiding 

suburbanisation or the ‘sprawl’ of cities. These recommendations were taken 

up in the ground-breaking first national formal policy statement in 1960, the 

Nota Inzake de Ruimtelijke Ordening in Nederlands (National Spatial Planning 

Report, or Report on Spatial Organisation of the Netherlands). 

It was followed in 1966 by the Tweede Nota over de Ruimtelijke Ordening 

(Second Report on Spatial Planning) which established the principle of concentrated 

deconcentration and added more specific plans for overspill and 

new towns. It also took a wider view of the position of the Randstad beyond 

the Netherlands as part of the western European urban agglomeration (Lambregts, 

2009). The assumption underlying both reports was that the cities of 

the western Netherlands constituted a functional urban region – the Randstad, 

with two interdependent ‘wings’, north and south. 

The 1950s and 1960s were formative years when government took great 

strides to lay the foundations of national spatial planning in the Netherlands, 

of which the Randstad concept was a central element. The three main reports 

from the 1950s and 1960s drew international attention. The notion of the 

Randstad was disseminated and popularised first by Burke 1966 who described 

the Randstad as the ‘Greenheart Metropolis’, and soon after by Hall 

as explained above. But the effectiveness of this initial planning, particularly 

containment policies, is questionable. More successful was the determined 

policy to meet housing needs leading to peripheral expansion of the cities, 

and even urban development in the Green Heart. 

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1970s and 1980s: city regions 

In the 1970s the post-war expectation of rapid and sustained economic growth 

was dashed by the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, leading to economic recession, 

with high levels of unemployment. This slowed population growth, urban 

development, and to a degree suburbanisation, although increasing prosperity 

for many sustained the growing demand for space. The recession and slower 

growth highlighted the vulnerability of the cities to economic downturns 

and drew attention to the relatively poor quality of life and residential environments 

they offered which was contributing to city population decline. 

Attention shifted to stimulating economic activity, but macro-economic 

conditions and political ideology favouring a more liberal economic approach 

meant that by the 1980s retrenchment of government activity was underway 

across the board in favour of more market-oriented thinking. 

The third multi-volume national spatial strategy of 1973 with various updates 

to 1983 was less ambitious for the Randstad agglomeration overall, 

concentrating instead on urban renewal and revitalisation of the cities, their 

commuting zones and growth centres. Urban containment policy pursued 

urban ‘bundling’ and ‘concentration’, primarily through the designation and 

implementation of urban growth centres and the necessary public transport 

infrastructure to ensure they were contained in the city-region. 

During much of the 1970s and 1980s the Randstad concept was in the doldrums, 

not forgotten but not a force in planning policy, playing only a secondary 

role in comparison to the city-regions. Towards the end of the 1980s 

there was a radical and controversial rethink of the notion, reducing its scope 

to the three larger city-regions making up a ‘West Wing’, where there was 

thought to be most potential to create an internationally competitive economic 

environment. However, political opposition ensured that this policy, 

set out formally in a 1988 draft Vierde Nota over de Ruimtelijke Ordening, the 

Fourth Spatial Strategy, was never adopted. The slimmed down city network 

was roundly criticised for, among other things, undermining the coherence 

of, and cooperation within, the Randstad and the Green Heart. 


1990s: Randstad world city 

The essential argument of the late 1980s that the Randstad had significance for 

the Netherlands international economic competitive position was carried forward 

to become a major stream of thinking in the 1990s when growth of the 

cities was re-established. Initially, it was ancillary to traditional concerns with 

patterns of spatial development, especially housing. The Vierde Nota over de 

Ruimtelijke Ordening Extra, the Fourth National Spatial Planning Report Extra 

finalised in 1993, became known by the acronym Vinex, referring to its major 

programme of urban expansions around the Netherlands, which were to deliver 

more than 750,000 homes, a third of which are located in the Randstad.


The 1990s were perhaps the high point of national spatial planning in 

the Netherlands and for the Randstad. The Vinex programme was orchestrated 

by central government to deliver largely housing development, with 

the public sector acting as developer and infrastructure provider. But this 

planning was not well integrated with other influential sectoral departments, 

especially Economic Affairs. The role of central government and the leading 

position of spatial planning were coming into question. The legacy of long 

recession in the 1980s maintained the government focus on the contribution 

of spatial policy to economic growth. One important aspect of this was the 

opportunity to capitalise on the creation of the EU Single Market by cementing 

the Randstad’s position as a world city – a polycentric metropolis of 

global significance and a gateway for international economic relationships. 

In this context, government’s economic priorities aligned with spatial planning 

for strengthening the polycentric metropolis of networked cities in the 

Randstad. It was at this time that Dutch planners were playing a leading role 

in the formulation of the European Spatial Development Perspective (CSD, 1999; 

Faludi and Waterhout, 2002), which promoted polycentrism and the integration 

of spatial policy throughout Europe. 

Fortuitously, economic growth and growing income from natural gas 

exploitation provided funding for significant investment in hard and soft 

infrastructure to strengthen competitive advantage in global gateways, economic 

clusters and corridors. But during the 1990s, the political ‘neoliberal 

offensive’ was also gaining ground, including privatisation and outsourcing 

of government and dismantling of the welfare state. These changes were to 

fundamentally reshape Dutch spatial planning in the following decades (De 

Jong, 2013). 

2000s: Rescaling 

By the 2000s, free market neoliberal ideology was firmly rooted in Dutch 

political culture (Waterhout et al., 2013). The very purpose of government 

came into question and former central government functions were devolved 

to provinces and municipalities, outsourced to the market, or simply 

abandoned. National government was less willing to take on a prescriptive 

position in national spatial development, and the private sector started to 

take over former government roles reinforced by EU macro-economic policies 

restraining public spending. There was a ‘rescaling’ of spatial planning 

(Roodbol- Mekkes and Van den Brink, 2015) both downwards to local government 

and upwards to the wider transnational north-west European scale. 

The approach in spatial policy was less visionary and more pragmatic following 

the dictum of city-regions as the ‘engines’ of national economic performance. 

Emphasis turned away from the Randstad to the engines – the 

city-regions, and the planning and delivery of key projects to support them, 

with much less thought to strategic interrelations. Government policy was 

more sectoral concentrating on improving the competitiveness of clusters of 

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economic activity in the growth areas of knowledge and creative industries 

(Bontje et al., 2011). 

The gap in government policy towards the wider Randstad region was 

filled by an independent group led by urban design and planning professors of 

Delft University of Technology and Amsterdam University. The group successively 

advocated for policy attention to a functionally integrated polycentric 

metropolis that could compete with other global regions, specifically at 

the level of the whole international delta of north-west Europe beyond the 

Randstad. This eventually resulted in a strongly articulated policy statement 

of the planning aldermen of the four main Randstad cities (Deltametropool, 

1998). Thus, spatial strategy and interventions at the scale of the ‘Deltametropolis’ 

became a formal part of government policy, taken up in the draft 

2001 Fifth Spatial Planning Report (Lambregts and Zonneveld, 2004). 

Attention to spatial networks in the wider Delta region was short-lived 

though as the political colour of government changed which took spatial 

policy back towards economic priorities. The final 2004 version of the Fifth 

Report (authorised translation: National Spatial Strategy) was a corporate 

government plan with a strong lead from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, 

and for the first time, explicitly recognising the need to deal with the effects 

of climate change. The Randstad returned as the principal location for the 

critical drivers of the Dutch economy that would be supported by national 

government funding: three dominant economic cores (of 13 in the country), 

nationally significant development projects or zones including Schiphol Airport 

and the port of Rotterdam (both designated as ‘Mainport’), and agricultural 

complexes or Greenports. 

The belated recognition of the need for an integrated strategy also gave 

rise to the first, and for now, the last, formal planning document that concentrates 

solely on the Randstad: Structuurvisie Randstad 2040 (Ministerie van 

VROM, 2008). Randstad 2040 took its lead from the economic agenda of 

government and asserted the ambition to strengthen the Randstad as one of 

Europe’s leading urban regions. It demonstrated the connections between 

policies and investments of various government departments and agencies 

and set out guiding principles: improving the quality of urban and natural 

environments, safety and climate resilience, concentrating new urban development 

in the cities, and improving accessibility, especially around the ‘two 

centres of gravity’ in the northern and southern Randstad. 

At the end of the 2000s, it seemed that the Randstad idea was restored with 

government policy taking on the agenda for a polycentric metropolis first established 

in the 1950s. But Randstad 2040 did not anticipate and was quickly 

overtaken by the severe effects of the 2008 banking crisis. Evers and Vogelij 

in Chapter 14 explain the weaknesses of the process that gave rise to Randstad 

2040 and its core assumptions, not least that high growth would continue. 

They argue that it failed to address political and economic uncertainties and 

the lack of wider civil society engagement which fatally undermined the robustness 

of its approach. After yet another election the document was shelved. 

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2010s: Randstad backstage 

Economic growth in the Netherlands went into reverse following the 2008 

global financial crisis, from 3.5% in 2007 to −4.5% in 2009. A fall in global 

demand and weak domestic conditions created a ‘Great Recession’, not 

equalled before or after until the COVID-19 crisis of 2020 (Masselink and 

Van den Noord, 2009). Naturally, government attention turned to dealing 

with very high levels of unemployment and slow growth. 

A change in the coalition government in 2010 ensured that neoliberal economic 

ideology remained at the fore. The new national government quickly 

adopted the Structuurvisie Infrastructuur en Ruimte (SVIR), the National Policy 

Strategy for Infrastructure and Spatial Planning (2012). The Randstad is 

mentioned in this ‘strategy’ but it has little content, save for proposals for new 

road building, a recurring policy goal when liberals and Christian-democrats 

participate in a government coalition. Here, it draws strongly on the 2007 

OECD Territorial Review of the Randstad Holland in citing the importance of 

building roads to ease congestion to support economic growth and the ‘business 

environment’. This and other recommendations in the OECD report 

such as using the Green Heart to provide housing seemed already outdated 

when made, and certainly are in 2020. But the report is very clear about the 

need for the Netherlands to tackle ‘the lack of integration of the Randstad 

to improve its operation as a unified urban area…’ (OECD, 2007: 27). It is 

rather doubtful though whether increasing road capacity could mean anything 

here. 

Economic growth is not everything of course, and other related issues 

began to figure prominently in the 2010s, not least the risks from climate 

change, and from that, the need to strengthen resilience in a country where 

70% of the wealth generation takes place on land below sea level (Stead, 

2014). Despite huge ambitions the Netherlands was lagging behind in some 

aspects of its climate mitigation and adaptation agenda, for example, in having 

the lowest share of renewable energy resources of all EU member states. 7 

The limited imagination of central government in addressing these issues 

through shaping the spatial configuration of the Randstad was confirmed 

when previously sacrosanct policies, the Green Heart and buffer zones, were 

formally abandoned. Instead the proposed ‘main national spatial structure’ 

is a location map of infrastructure – pipelines, energy, water, nature and 

other projects, though it does explain the important cross-border connections. 

Further decentralisation saw that regional planning was taken on by 

the provinces and the institutions created for the north and south wings as 

explained above. 

The SVIR did not signal the demise of the Randstad idea, but it has been 

very much backstage in spatial development through the 2010s. Indeed, for 

much of this time, spatial planning itself has been much less in favour, with 

its ministry abolished in 2010 and its concerns becoming just one part of the 

Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (in 2017 spatial planning 

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moved again to another ministry). An agenda for simplification of spatial 

planning as part of a wider transition to ‘government as enabler not provider’ 

was adopted in 2012 under the slogan Eenvoudig Beter, ‘Simply Better’. Its 

centrepiece proposal is a new Omgevingswet, the Environment and Planning 

Act. The choice of the word ‘environment’ is not accidental. It marks a step 

away from ‘spatial planning’ with the intention to integrate 15 acts completely 

and about 25 acts partially and all government policies that affect the living 

environment – and also to integrate the 80 or more related government visions 

and policy documents in one overarching strategy. The first iteration of 

that ‘simplified’ scheme was delivered in 2019 in the Nationale Omgevingsvisie, 

Draft National Strategy on Spatial Planning and the Environment (NOVI). 

The NOVI has immense ambitions. The idea that the solution to the urgent 

need to integrate the impact of sectoral policies on the living environment 

lies in the creation of one dominant ‘environmental’ law and strategy 

is questionable, especially the suggestion that this is a simplification. At the 

time of writing accession of the Act is proposed for 2022, some ten years after 

it was conceived. However, in the event, the content of the Draft NOVI is 

not so different from previous national spatial strategies. The differences are 

more in the process and specificity. The weakening position of national government 

means that it has had to engage more with other actors who do have 

power to deliver, be they, other government departments, local government, 

agencies, business or civil society. And the draft is very much a general document 

establishing principles and policies, with few specific designations. Difficult 

decisions will be left to the provinces, municipalities and agencies, and 

they will need new tools to balance the many competing interests and priorities 

set out in the NOVI. The Randstad does figure in the text but rather 

tangentially, in relation to the challenge of maintaining the open identity of 

the Green Heart. However, the NOVI still recognises the importance of the 

maintenance of concentrated development in a polycentric structure of cities 

‘which function as a single, complementary system’ (Ministry of the Interior 

and Kingdom Relations, 2019: 24) but at the scale of the whole Netherlands 

rather than the Randstad. In 2020, the claim that the strategy is not a static 

document but rather a process of constant adaptation will be severely tested if 

it is to remain significant in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. 


2020s post-pandemic Randstad 

The crisis from 2020 was a major blow to the Netherlands. From the 1980s 

city populations were growing and during the 2010s the economy had 

strengthened, indicated for example, by the declining levels of property vacancy. 

In the aftermath of the crisis these advances will inevitably be reversed, 

and some problems that were worsening such as housing affordability, 

exacerbated. Urban densification in the Randstad in order to deliver a government 

priority of 1 million new homes by 2030 will certainly be resisted, 

with changing residential location preferences putting more pressure on open


land. The anticipated decline in commuting especially by public transport, 

and growth in teleworking and online shopping might reduce the demand for 

commercial space in the Randstad cities, though it will also present opportunities 

to improve the living environment sought by NOVI. 

Despite COVID-19, the Netherlands greatest challenge remains the effects 

of climate change, and not least in the Randstad where many critical 

assets are located in the most vulnerable places. NOVI does set the scene 

for more concerted action on mitigation and adaptation with, for example, 

a key priority to ensure space for the energy transition, and an emphasis 

on mixed uses, self-sufficient neighbourhoods, circular cities, and healthy 

environments. But does the NOVI go far enough in adapting spatial policy 

to new and possible future conditions? In Chapter 8, Boelens and Jacobs 

argue that future policy needs to go further with a fundamental rethink of 

the accepted wisdom around spatial policy and the generation of growth, 

to new ways of creating prosperity. They cite the example of the shifting 

objectives of Rotterdam Port from a gateway for goods where profitability 

is declining, towards business services allied to the port and its international 

standing. The COVID-19 crisis will strengthen demands for new directions 

in policy. These may accelerate shifts in economic structure with more attention 

to the consequences of climate change and the inevitable demands 

for more attention to healthy environments. We return to these points in 

the conclusion. 

Structure of the book 

The following chapters are organised in three sections broadly following the 

structure of origins, operation, and planning of the Randstad. We begin 

in Part II with a review of the history of the Randstad and explanation of 

how no one city evolved to dominate the region. The four chapters explain 

how the pattern of the Randstad’s spatial configuration and distribution of 

functions arises from the interplay of changing natural environmental conditions 

especially related to flood risk, waves of technological innovation from 

windmills to wind turbines, economic and social organisation, and strong 

government intervention. 

Part III examines the contemporary operation of the Randstad as a metropolitan 

region and asks if the reality of functional relations meets the 

concept of polycentricity. The five chapters in this section demonstrate the 

different ways of understanding and measuring functional relationships and 

complementarity, and outline dominant themes in the discourse of urban 

development in the Randstad. Part IV reviews changing ideas about how 

government should organise itself to strengthen and exploit the Randstad, 

the actual outcomes in governance and policy, and the contribution of spatial 

planning to shaping its current form and performance. We conclude in 

the final chapter by returning to, and offering answers to our four main 

questions. 

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Notes 


1 https://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/world2018t.html (accessed 29 June 2020). 

2 In Europe, Malta has a higher population density and urbanisation rate, and Iceland 

a higher urbanisation rate. 

3 Source: Statistics Netherlands, see opendata.cbs.nl. 

4 Source: Figures for all transport infrastructure are taken from Eurostat Inland 

Transport Infrastructure at the Regional Level, updated 2020 (accessed 29 June 

2020). 

5 August 2019: nearly 220.000 on average per day, https://www.schiphol.nl/en/ 

schiphol-group/page/transport-and-traffic-statistics/ (accessed 29 June 2020). 

6 Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020, https://www. 

timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2020/ (accessed 29 June 

2020). 

7 Eurostat renewable energy statistics, January 2020, https://ec.europa.eu/ 

eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Renewable_energy_statistics (accessed 

29 June 2020). 

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The Randstad, a polycentric metropolis, by Vincent Nadin & Will Zonneveld. (Introduction Chapter)

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